Dirty Laundry

This blog is going to be very different for me. I’ve never used dictation on my computer before. It may read the same to you however I am not typing any of this. I’m speaking into my computer’s microphone.

I’ll get this right out of the way and let you know why I’m dictating this rather than typing it. I was very excited to be finished with my final edits on the new novel. And to celebrate, I signed up at the local recreation center to play drop in hockey. This was not a competitive league, we were not keeping score, our goalie was a 70-year-old woman named Shirley who could barely shuffle from post-to post. This should give you a sense of the speed and tempo of the game. However, I was having fun just skating around when the puck was passed to me. I reached out for it with my right arm and I felt a snap. I didn’t think anything of it. I thought I just strained a muscle. I continued to play in a little bit of pain. Figured I would put some ice on it when I got home.

When I got the locker room and I took off my equipment I looked down at my arm and saw that my bicep was not where it was supposed to be. It was floating up around my shoulder like a flabby piece of beef tenderloin. My initial thought was “that does not look right.” My next thought was “I need to get out of here before anyone else sees this.”

I returned home, showed my wife, and she too thought that there was a problem. I called my doctor, he had me send pictures, he told me I was probably going to need surgery.

And so here I am, post operation, trying to blog by dictating into my computer because I don’t have the use of my right arm. And while the itching under the bandage is driving me insane, and everything I have to do feels like an effort, I’m still grateful that it was just a ruptured bicep tendon and not something worse, something terminal. Because, there’s nothing that will make you feel more grateful for the life you have been sitting for six hours in an emergency room.

I am going to stop here because I keep having to go back and fix the mistakes my dictation software is making. It does seem a miracle that I can just speak and the words are typed on the screen. However when words like “felt like a snap” are typed as ASAP and the word puck is typed out as something far more offensive, one can get a little frustrated. It also doesn’t help that my dog keeps barking at the neighbors in the hall and my dictation software starts typing out Anna Anna Anna quiet Anna quiet Anna.